Critical Caste Studies and Shakespearean Cinemas: Reading Iru , a South Indian Film Adaptation of Othello

Abstract: This essay argues that Shakespeare studies has yet fully to absorb the insights of critical caste studies, continuing to treat caste as a descriptive or analogical category rather than as a lived structure of power that operates through gender, affect, and institutions. By reading Iru (2023), a contemporary Malayalam-language film adaptation of Othello , as a diagnostic of caste hierarchy as opposed to a cultural translation, the article suggests the ways in which Shakespeare criticism can move beyond analogy towards an intersectional critique attentive to accountability, asymmetry, and structural reproduction. In so doing, the article locates Shakespeare studies as a site for rethinking the discipline's own methodological limitations and possibilities.